Breakers square off against Capitals

Bryce Alderton

The Newport Beach Breakers have made it -- to the “Big Apple,” that

is.

In just its second season of existence, the World Team Tennis

squad from Newport Beach qualified for the league’s playoffs after

finishing 8-6, good for second place in the Western Conference. The

Breakers face the Sacramento Capitals (13-1), champions of the

Western Conference, in one league semifinal at a time to be

determined Friday at the United States Tennis Association National

Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, N.Y., site of next week’s U.S.

Open.

The Hartford FoxForce (9-5), champions of the Eastern Conference,

will face the Delaware Smash in the other semifinal Friday. The

semifinals will be played at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Pacific time, but the

order of play, as of Wednesday, had yet to be announced on the league

website.

The World Team Tennis final is scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday.

The Breakers dealt the Capitals their lone loss, a 23-16 decision

July 14 at the Palisades Tennis Club, when Wimbledon champion Maria

Sharapova made her one appearance of the season for Newport.

The Capitals, however, defeated Newport in three other meetings,

including two in the last week of the regular season to secure the

top spot in the Western Conference.

Newport heads into the semifinal with four players (Ramon Delgado,

Ellis Ferreira, Aniko Kapros and Nana Miyagi) to cover men’s and

women’s singles, men’s and women’s doubles and mixed doubles.

The Breakers finished second to the Capitals in team rankings for

men’s singles.

Delgado was a large part of that success, winning 48 of 81 games

for a .593 winning percentage, good for fifth overall, in the regular

season, the highest mark for a player with more than 80 games played.

He finished the regular season fifth

Newport finished the regular season third in men’s doubles behind

Sacramento and St. Louis, respectively. Delgado and Ferreira anchored

much of the load and received support from brothers Bob and Mike

Bryan, the top-ranked doubles duo in the world, who won two of three

men’s doubles sets for Newport in their four matches this season.

The Bryans, along with Sharapova, will not compete in the

semifinal. Sharapova, originally from Russia, is seeded seventh in

the women’s singles draw of the U.S. Open, which begins Monday.

Aniko Kapros carried the Breakers in women’s singles for much of

the season, claiming 44 of 76 games (.579 winning percentage), good

for sixth overall, and lost just one set before sitting out the final

two matches with a knee injury.

Kapros and Miyagi won 50% of their games in women’s doubles,

contributing to a fourth-place standing overall. Miyagi regularly

teamed with Ferreira in mixed doubles.